Story and interview contributed by Propaganda Anonymous:
I first came across the works of Michael Muhammad Knight in a library in East Atlanta Village during the winter of 2007. While living down the block from the library I would walk their and peruse the shelves and check my e-mail on the library’s Internet, as this was my computer access for the winter.

I had just finished reading Jeff Chang’s ‘Can’t stop, Won’t Stop,’ when I came across Michael’s most recent book ‘The Five Percenters.’ I was immediately taken in by not just the story of The Five Percenters, their founder Clarence 13X aka ALLAH, but also the precision and depth in this ethnographic study of a very important group of people to the philosophical foundations of Hip-Hop culture.   

This book was not some tabloid exploitation trying to cash in on a topic that has not yet really been discussed. One could write a book of one’s own just by following the threads of history Michael laid out in his footnote section. I thought that this cat had done some serious research and he presented his findings with care.

I searched out the other works of Michael Muhammad Knight, and saw that he has paved his own perspectives upon his understanding of the religion of Islam. His first book was a fiction story about an Islamic punk band called the Taqwacores. This book is cited as a major influence for the nascent punk rock scene in America and beyond.

I then came across his autobiographical road book called ‘Blue-Eyed Devil,’ and began reading it. This book chronicles his adventures in his search of the heart of American Islam.

have since become confident in my view that Michael Muhammad Knight is a very important writer for today’s world. Michael’s own search for his place within the definitions of Islam, sets an inspiring precedent for others also searching for their own voices in relation to how the world presents itself to us.

Some might call his beliefs heretical; some might salute him for striking his own path and call him a pioneer. Regardless of these views I see Michael is an excellent writer, and someone who raises some veils and raises some great questions that we all might benefit in asking as well.

This interview takes place on 125th Street, Harlem, NYC.

Prop: Focusing on the 5 Percenter work, give me a brief description of how you got into that in your search for an American Islam.

MMK: OK, basically, what I was looking for, was just as Islam when it reached Persia and Persians became Muslim, Islam also became Persian.

When Islam reached India, it became Indian. As Islam reached America, or took root in America, it became something American. It evolved it’s own American tradition. So, I was trying to examine all the different shapes that Islam has taken in this country.

And I saw Master Fard Muhammad as summing the whole history of Islam in America, because he was most likely coming from the immigrant experience. He ties that into the American experience, obviously. And without Master Fard and everything he did, there really would be no indigenous Islamic tradition, as we know it.

Malcom X, Muhammad Ali, Louis Farrakhan, and The 5 Percenters.

So in my struggle to know and understand Master Fard, that’s what brought me into the 5 Percent. And what really started to fascinate me the more I got into it, was the recognition was that this is it’s own tradition.

You can talk about Islam in America, or the Nation of Islam, or whatever, but that won’t really capture The 5 Percent. You have to really start looking at it as it’s own tradition; as it’s own system. And it really spoke a lot to me on a variety of different levels, from religious levels to cultural and historical levels. So it’s a pretty deep well.

PROP: In terms of how The 5 Percent belief system can be seen as being a foundation for Hip-Hop music and Hip-Hop culture, where do you think 5 Percenter thought is at today as a growing philosophy and movement?

MMK: 5 Perceters were at the very beginning of Hip-Hop. 5 Percenters started out in New York City, and Hip-Hop started out in New York City. For much of the history you can’t separate the two. As Hip-Hop expanded, on the one hand that may have diluted the 5 Percent influence, in a way, because Hip-Hop coming to the west coast or Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, places where the 5 Percent didn’t have as deep a history, yet.

That may compromised the influence.

But on the other hand, people all over the world are listening to Rakim and the Wu-Tang Clan. And the expansion of Hip-Hop has paralleled the expansion of the 5 Percenters.

And now you can find the 5 Percent anywhere. And I think just as much as the 5 Percent was involved in the origins of Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop was also a way for the 5 Percent to expand as well. They help each other.

PROP: The story behind Clarence 13X (ALLAH), him as a character, he seems almost like a myth to some degree, in terms of as a level of inspiration to people in trying to get their lives together amongst a bunch of socio-economic chaos.

How relevant do you see this guy, where would you chart him in the tradition of Fard, Malcolm X, and Elijah Muhammad?

MMK: Well, during his lifetime he pretty much was just the guy on the corner in Harlem.

He became significant in local politics towards the end of his career when Mayor Lindsey began engaging with actual community leaders and not just elected officials. He didn’t really reach a national level because he was taken out before he could go that far.

His real influence came after his death, when he really did become a kind of mythic figure.

The young gods, who were teenagers when he was assassinated, held him in such awe so that when they carried on the teachings, the way that they communicated the teachings to the next generation made him larger than life. So I’d say that he’s much more relevant now than he ever was when he was alive. Which is true for a lot of historical figures.

PROP: The metaphor of the white devil, the story of Yacub and 6 ounce brain. Just break down a little science on this.

MMK: Basically the history taught by the Nation of Islam which is shared by the 5 Percenters is that what you would call the white race is the creation of a scientist named Yacub. And Yacub created, engineered, this race of devils who were physically weaker, mentally weaker and predisposed to wickedness. And who would cause destruction and oppression on the earth until the devils time ran out basically.

I got a lot out of that mythology. I didn’t treat it as physical history. I don’t believe that there was actually a man named Yacub 6,000 thousand years ago who fled to the island of Patmos and started a eugenics government to graft a pale skin race of devils.

Like I said, I don’t view that as physical history.

I think the main purpose of Mythology and Religion is explain the presence of evil in the world and that is a very viable and worthwhile way of explaining evil in America and perhaps the rest of the world.

But for me, what I personally got out of it, was a way to understand myself as an American. I don’t believe myself to be genetically disposed to wickedness. Or to be born inherently inferior to anyone, but if you are white in a white supremacist culture you’re going to have the same pins and needle stuck in your head that you need to take out.

You’re going to be receiving hardcore cultural messages.

And those can become so deeply ingrained in you that you don’t even know that you are still carrying that out, and in that respect that makes you a devil.

You are doing things without even knowing the wicked ramifications of it.

To touch on the story we were talking about earlier. About the professor who got his PhD in Slavery (studies). He was a white man who spent a decade of his life studying racial oppression. So you might consider him to be the most politically and socially aware and enlightened white man on the planet, you know what I mean.

But one day he was walking down the street with a Jewish student who had a Star of David medallion around his neck, and two African American men walked up to them and one of them touched that medallion. He took it in his hand, and this white professor and his Jewish student both become paralyzed in fear. And the dude just says, ‘That’s beautiful. That’s a really cool chain.’ And they just walk on.

And this white professor, with his PhD in Slavery was confronted with this ugliness inside himself that he didn’t even know was there. That’s how deeply ingrained that devilishment is.

The Lessons say that it takes the devil 35 to 50 years of study to even be allowed to trade among the righteous, original people, just to be considered a Muslim son.

I think what this really offered me was the challenge to own up to it.

I was born in this culture and I have those pins and needles in my head.

And to take those pins and needles out is just a process of civilization, and civilizing yourself.

I’m really thankful for encountering that. It gave me a whole new understanding of my place in American history. And what it meant for me to be born in the place that I was.

Prop: With the lessons you speak of can you expand on that in terms of how they tie-in with the Supreme Mathematics and Supreme Alphabets?

MMK: The Lessons was the Nation of Islam’s process of initiation. There were these texts that you memorized upon your entry into the mosque. Basically, the structure of the lessons was as transcribed question and answer sessions between Fard and Elijah Muhammad. So Fard, the teacher, would ask the question, and Elijah Muhammad, the student, would give the answer. And so these questions and answers are how the Nation of Islam taught its beliefs to new members.

And ALLAH, when he was in the mosques was known as Clarence 13X, he mastered those lessons and eventually when he broke with the Nation he took them out on the street.

And these secret lessons that were so fiercely guarded within the mosque were now on the street corners, they were on the basketball courts, in the parks, and teenagers were teaching them to kids even younger than themselves. And that’s really how the 5 Percent got started. From the liberation of these lessons birthing a whole different culture.

Prop: That’s Dope. So the Supreme Mathematics and the Supreme Alphabets were part of the Lessons and what not, just to get myself clear here. That’s part of the 120? So when one masters those lessons, within this belief system, is that what is described as ‘Knowledge of Self’?

MMK: The Knowledge of Self is for the black man to recognize that there is no mystery god up in heaven. That he is his own god, that he’s the god of the universe.

The Mathematics and the Alphabets is what Allah, the former Clarence 13X, added on.

That was his understanding and a system the he revealed, you can say.

They compliment the understanding of the Lessons. A lot of gods consider the Mathematics and the Alphabets to be the key to unlocking the lessons.

So like today, today is the fifth of the month. In Mathematics that would be POWER.

So today’s Mathematics would be POWER, and the day’s degree asks you, ‘How do we take Jerusalem away from the devil?’

If I wanted to understand that lesson, I might try to relate that to the day’s Mathematics of POWER. So we can talk about Jesus being a teacher of Freedom, Justice, and Equality. And people taking his message, distorting it, corrupting it, using it as a shield for the dirty religion. And that’s how they got what? POWER.

So, for you to get Power, you have to take Jerusalem back from the devil.

And I’m just a baby in that culture. If you talk to a god that’s been in this for forty years they would add on a whole depth that is beyond my reach.

That’s just a quick break down.

Prop: In your own journey with Islam. You identify yourself as a Sunni for a while. Where are you at today? How would you describe your own personal relationship with Islam today?

MMK: I used to believe in a very narrow definition of Islam, So narrow that when I was in Pakistan at 17 studying Islam in a Madres, Pakistani men would tell me, ‘You can’t learn Islam in Pakistan. It’s too diluted. You have to go to Saudi and get the real Arab Islam.’ At the time I accepted that. Then later on as I was looking at it, I said why do these guys have such inferiority complexes about how they understood and practiced Islam? Why were they in submission to Saudi power? So eventually I started looking at Islam as an American Muslim. And I would hear that a lot here too, ‘You know it’s a diluted Islam in America. American Muslims don’t know what they are doing.’

And if I look at Saudi Arabia it doesn’t seem like the Islam, the type that is enforced today in Saudi, is anything that I want to be a part of. So for me to understand myself as a Muslim I really have to take it into my own hands. That’s another area that I got a lot out of the 5 Percenters. The Lessons that break it down that you have the 10% who are the rich and bloodsuckers and slave makers of the poor, and who teach what they know isn’t true.

And you have the 85% who are the deaf dumb and blind, slaves to mental death and power. And the 5% are the poor righteous teachers, the one’s who recognize themselves as true and living gods. Now, I personally, I’m a Muslim. I believe in the Mystery God. But I wouldn’t call myself an 85% because the Lessons say the 85% are the slaves to mental death and power, this is the way a god broke it down to me. Slaves to mental death and power. So for me the 85%, are those Muslims who submit blindly to the imams. Or the Christians who just submit to the priests. So you can be a Christian on your own. You can be a Christian and have your own relationship with Christ, and not let a priest stand in your way. Or I can be a Muslim and not submit to what the Muslims in Saudi Arabia say.

When that happens, I’m taking back Jerusalem from the Devil. I am reclaiming my own power.

Prop: Respect. When I was reading ‘5 Percenters’ and it’s a credit to your writing and what you are writing about, me being a white kid in America and what not. And the idea of the white devil and the original man and the black man as god, and you were speaking about the paradoxical character of Azreal. There was a controversy that he stirred up in some circles by him saying that he himself was a god, and that within some 5 Percent circles they say that a white man cannot be a god but only have knowledge of god, so what is your view on that. If a black man can call himself god, then why can’t a white man do the same?

MMK: I think that if you take it to the historical context off the lessons. Like why are the lessons important? Why is the culture important? Why is the value system important? I think that the meaning of god there is for the original man to lift himself up rather than waiting for a super natural power to do it for him. So I get it on that level.

The way I was taught, it’s not claiming to be a mystical creature that other people cannot be. It’s more of a social and political statement about what you are doing in your community. I’ve been told all kinds of things within the 5 Percent community. I’ve even been greeted with ‘Peace Black Man.’ I’d go to a Parliament and be greeted with ‘Peace Black Man.’

And I’ve got my blue eyes and I’m not fooling anybody. I am what I am. But, you’ll hear all kinds of things with that. There are even some 5 Percenters who teach that white people can be gods, and I’m not sure how seriously that’s taken.

I never was treated as the devil. That’s one thing I can say about the 5 Percent. I was never treated as something inferior or as the devil. My ways and actions was how I was understood. If I came in with respect, I was treated with respect. And that’s how I took it.

The way it was explained to me by a Jewish man who worked for City Hall in the 60s. And he was very familiar with Allah and the 5 Percenters, and I asked him ‘Do you see this as black supremacy? Do you see this as racism?’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, it’s just like the Jews believing that they are the chosen people.’ The way that he phrased it was, ‘This is just a way to take some pretty bad kids and teach them self-respect.’

So to me you really have to look at the history of where this came from and then look at the mythology and value system celebrating the specific struggle of a particular people.

So I respect the 5 Percent very much. I can’t go in there and claim it as my own, and say ‘Yes, I’m god. I am everything that want to be. I’m on the same level as you are in this culture.’ There is a very specific historical place for this and I don’t want to step on that.

When I go to Parliaments it’s kind of like going to dinner at somebody’s house, or when you are staying at someone’s house. I take what’s offered to me, respectfully. If they offer me the couch, if they offer me the guest bedroom, I accept what I am offered there.

Prop: Again, just clarifying terms and what not, speaking of ‘original man’ Can you just break that down briefly?

MMK: The way it was broken down to me, again it sounds like racial supremacy to say that black man was the original man and what not, but the way that the first born’s broke it down to me was you can hear that on the Discovery channel today. But in the 60s that was a revolutionary statement. That the first human beings on earth were black. I don’t see any particular reason to deny that. It’s just how our history worked out. That’s why he’s called the original man.

Prop: I see in your work, probably more so in ‘Blue-eyed Devil’ than the ‘5 Percenters’ an exploration of Sufism. Your own searching and working out what Sufism is. So in your own words, how does Sufism fit into all this, and perhaps is it related to Noble Drew Ali?

MMK: There have been attempts to reconcile the 5 Percent teachings on god and Sufi teachings on god. I personally don’t go there, but I can see why it works for some. Honestly, sometimes it’s not such a leap, because if the Koran says, ‘God is closer to you than the vein in your neck.’ Well what’s the vein in your neck? The vein in your neck is you. What’s closer to you than you? So on some levels I can see a relationship there. And Noble Drew Ali drew upon a lot of mystical sources, and people have found parallels with Sufism. I don’t necessarily know if he himself interacted with Sufism. Some of the stuff reads the same across the board, Christian mysticism, New Age Theosophy, Sufism, you have a lot of similar themes. So I think there is a place, if you have an interest in Sufism and you have an interest in Noble Drew Ali, you have enough to work with to connect the two. But I don’t necessarily know that Noble Drew Ali himself had any connection with Sufism.

Prop: One thing that Ali seemed to speak about was the culture of the Moors. Have you looked into the Moor culture? And if so, are there any interesting discoveries that you’ve some across?

MMK: Well what Noble Drew Ali was trying to do was offer a national identity that was a preferable alternative to what America offered, because America offered no identity. America offered second-class citizenship. So what Noble Drew Ali was saying was, ‘You are not Negroes. (Which was the term at the time.) You are Moors. And you have a nationality.’ And this was at a time when you had all kinds of European immigration coming in and white people coming off the boat weren’t white. They were Irish, Polish, Italian, German, whatever. Whereas Black people were just Black. And Noble Drew Ali was saying, ‘NO. You also have a nationality.’ So that’s where he was going with that.

The Moorish Science Temple still lives on. There are people who still cling to that. But if you look at the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, Noble Drew Ali, The 5 Percent, it’s all about taking a greater identity than what America offers.

Taking something greater than what America says that you are, something greater than America itself even.

Prop: Now how would you see all of this tying into the Punk Rock movement and Hip-Hop, but for this question Punk more so?

MMK: Well, I think with Hip-Hop and Punk Rock and Reggae for that matter; the core to these movements is disenfranchised young people making resistance music. And so I think there is more common ground between those different genres than a lot of people recognize.

Prop: We were talking early, not recorded, about the conversation you had with the RZA about the significance that Hip-Hop has played in where we are at in America’s political system. Can you talk about that again?

MMK: Sure. I was building with RZA a couple of times. I spoke to him when I was writing the book and writing to the article for Vibe, and we were talking about the legacy, not just of the Wu-Tang Clan, but also of 5 Percenter MC’s and Hip-Hop itself. And he said something to me, he said ‘In this day and time, to have a serious discussion about the possibility of a black man being president. The Wu-Tang has a lot to do with that.’ And when he said that to me, at first I thought ‘this is some crazy rock-star self-promotion type of thing. But then when I really reflected on it after speaking to him I said you know that’s true. That’s actually true. Because when I was 13 and I was growing up. Where I come from it’s corn-fields, and square dances, and demolition derby’s. I grew up in the sticks. And Chuck D said that rap was the black CNN, and that was true for me, because rap was my source of information to a world that I had no connection to. And my whole intellectual and spiritual trajectory for like the last 15 years was completely impacted by Public Enemy. If it weren’t for Public Enemy I wouldn’t have read the Autobiography of Malcolm X. As a white kid growing up in a farm town, I never would have walked into a mosque. I never would have gone to Pakistan. I never would have had the life that I had. So I really think that Hip-Hop has built more bridges and opened more doors than almost anything in American culture, and people talk about how this year’s election is potentially a generational shift in politics. It really is an election which the Hip-Hop generation plays a part. So what the RZA said really wasn’t that far off the mark.

Hip-Hop has had that kind of impact.

Prop: Where is your research into Nuwabianism right now taking you intellectually? Give me a quick synopsis about all that.

MMK: I’ve been doing a lot of research into Nuwabu. I’ve always had kind of peripheral encounters with it. Getting into the history of the 5 Percent, Nuwabians they started out in Brooklyn. So they were there for a lot of that early history too.

What I am interested in right now is kind of a genealogy of York’s teachings. Looking at the whole tradition from which it draws from. A lot of people say that he was this and then he switched over to that, and then he was this and ten he switched over to that.

And these were complete 180’s. If you really look at the history of African American religions, you might see that the shifts really did have a connection with each other.

And that’s what I’m interested in now. The genealogy in how this unique reality system became constructed. There has been limited writing on it. And it’s basically playing within the cult paradigm. And that’s really not the game I’m trying to play.

I’m just looking at the historical courses that shaped that particular tradition.

Prop: Cool. Some of the things that get brought up with Nuwabianism and even sometimes with the Moorish Science Temple, what I don’t really see coming up with your stuff too much, and maybe that’s done consciously, and that’s concerning the ‘mystical’ areas, especially the area of Freemasonry. I know Elijah Muhammad has written at least one book about Freemasonry, and the Moorish Science Temple said, from my research, that Freemasonry was really just a usurping of Egyptian beliefs that was contorted and then presented in the form of Freemasonry. And this contorted form became an institution primarily geared towards white men.

Has the Freemasons come up at all within your research, and if so, what are your thoughts on the subject?

MMK: Noble Drew Ali was definitely influenced more by Freemasonry than by traditional Islamic sources. Like I said, I couldn’t find any evidence that he was directly involved with Sufism or any other kind of mainstream Islam, but rather his imagery of Islam was shaped more by the Shriners and the way that he structured his organization and his texts and stuff was influenced by Freemasonry. That’s also part of the genealogy of African American religious tradition that I’ve been getting into lately, because Freemasonry really is the starting point in a way for Islam into this country. And that ties into Egyptology, that York builds on now. So when I was trying to say that going to Islam to going to space ships to Egyptology to Judaism, to the outsider these seem like very unrelated things. But within the tradition that York was working with it doesn’t seem to be so unrelated. He wasn’t going from Islam to Buddhism, or something. Which hadn’t really taken that much of a hold in the African American religious tradition.

There were definitely historical relationships between all of those things.

Prop: In ‘Blue-Eyed Devil’ and ‘5 Percenters’ you speak about Hakim Bey, aka Peter Lamborn Wilson, can you just tell some positive things you’ve taken from his works?

And also how much importance do you think this individual has in understanding some of what we’ve been talking about today?

MMK: Well, Peter was really influential on me in terms of seeing Islam as something that can be flexible and diverse and creative. Because Islam in my previous experience really had no room for creativity. And when Peter spoke about heresy in a positive way that really blew my mind, and that opened me up to appreciate things like the 5 Percent in a way that I really wouldn’t have been able to before. When I was caught up in issues of what’s authentically Islam. So that’s definitely the good that I’ve gotten from him.

Prop: Have you ever come across the writings of Idries Shah?

MMK: In a previous lifetime, but I can’t really recall what I got out of it. It must have been a decade ago.

Prop: Where do you think the positive potential for all this is going? Are you encountering more people like yourself? Those of the white class really taking on all this stuff with a sober mind, who are really trying to do something positive in collaboration with those from the communities like the 5 Percent who are really trying to build. Are you optimistic about this stuff? What are your thoughts about the future trajectory concerning race relations and the potential for peace and real understanding in America and beyond?

MMK: I think that the worst today is as bad as it’s ever been, but the best may be better. You know what I mean. Here we are, two white guys talking about the 5 Percenters and Hip-Hop up in Harlem. I think that that end of the spectrum has expanded. I don’t know if you saw after the West Virginia primary, people in West Virginia talking about if they would vote for a black man, or how they feel about someone with a middle name Hussein, and stuff like that. Like that is still there, and I don’t know if that’s going anywhere.

But, I think that there is more on the other side than there were in previous years. So I don’t think that that kind of evil is ever going to be gone completely.

But I do believe that there are more enlightened people now than ever before. I hope so.

Prop: Respect. Thank You man.

After I turned off the tape recorder, Michael and I walked over to the Mecca Street Academy where ALLAH (Clarence 13X) started the 5 Percenter organization. The Street Academy sits right behind the Apollo Theater. We spoke with a cat named Allah B, who was one of the leaders of the community Allah B. A strong man with a pleasant demeanor, Allah B greeted Michael with a smile. Allah B told us about the plans in the works of the Street Academy expanding. He also told Michael that he just missed Azreal and that we might still be able to catch him as he just went across the street.

Michael and I left and walked east on 125th. We saw a small march of people protesting the recent New York City court ruling in the Shawn Bell murder case. Shawn Bell was shot by off-duty police officers during his bachelor party celebrations in the parking lot of a strip club, and the police officers involved in the shooting were recently acquitted of murder during the time of this interview.

We decided to join the march and we walked with the small cadre for many blocks before parting ways ourselves. Michael was looking to catch a subway downtown, so we ask approached a man and woman at the corner where the nearest station was. They told us, and as they were asking us what the protest was about, I noticed that the dude was wearing a T-shirt with Freemason insignia’s all over it. It looked like a shirt a fraternity member would wear, except that it was full of Freemason symbols. I inferred that he was a Freemason, and thought it was quite a funny coincidence considering the conversation Michael and I just had.

After all was said and done, the couple continued walking south, Michael headed east to catch his train, and I bounced northbound back to 125th street. I looked around Harlem during my walk. Thinking about its history and all that has gone on here. I thought about the recent real estate developments, and how that word ‘gentrification’ has reared it’s ugly head up here. I also reflected upon the conversation I just had with Michael, and thought about the things that he has explored and written about, and thought to myself about how right now is the best time to have more conversations like the one we just had.

Great interview with KRS-One that took place on 9/12/2008 during SMT Studios’ Now or Never 2008 benefit concert for dying September 11th first responders. KRS discusses the plight of the rescue workers, what happened on 9/11, and his attitude towards Hip-Hop and social consciousness. From Blip.tv.

Great discussion between two of hip-hop’s most intellectual representatives.